Confessions of a Shopaholic. That is me.

Hey shopaholics and shopaphils ! You'll find some familiar stuff here :D

Max has occupied the warm place on my pillow and since I don't want to distract him from that cute pose he's currently taken, I will write these thoughts of mine. 2am and I don't want to do anything but writing.

Some days ago I watched "The Confessions of a Shopaholic". The movie was weak and so-so, kind of a mix from "Sex and the City", "Devil wears Prada" and "Love and other disasters". I had to watch that because of the familiar topic.

Unlike with the heroine of the "Shopaholic", in childhood i had the best clothes because they were either sewn by my mother or sent from US by her relatives. And my nother was the one developing the sense of style in us.

The heroine was somehow close to me since she was a journalist/columnist at a magazine (like Carrie Bradshaw, like me in my inner desires) and her addiction to nice stuff. She couldn't resist the calling of fancy shop glasses, mannequines persuading to buy the stuff that is very nice but not always needed. I have the same thing. The main difference between my shopaholism and the heroine's, is that I spend the real money I have and not credits.

My credit history is clear because it's empty. I don't have and never had any line of credit on my cards, neither I have bought anything on credit. I just spend my salary on the things that i love and i think i can't live without :) That leads to the money shortage by the end of the month. I can spend my last thousands of drams on a bag or shoe that i think will be sold out by the time i receive my next salary. When my wallet becomes empty (see last days of each month) I just start saving on my evening cafe-attendings. Tea and that's it :D

I save the change from the money i take from my dad for the shopping for home, that's usually some hundred drams only :D (I do it usually on my own money,.. when i still have it) and sometimes i do borrow some money from my dad if i have to go out that day, for a tea. But i have to mention that i never become skinflint and i always do offer a coffee or tea to my friend if i feel like that. Even if that were my last 500 drams. I'm used to be "empty-walleted" :D and used to not taking the wallet, because all my money is in coins and fits in my pockets quite well :D

Yeah, i feel terrible those days (although, getting used to and better by each month :D), but that's the price i have to pay for my shopping addiction which i'm not sure can be overcame anytime soon.

I'm a shopaholic. I do admit that. It's a recent addiction and I cannot predict how far it will go. But I can feel some huge difference between me - some years ago and me-now. And not only of the outlook, amount of "labels" in my wardrobe and the permanent short of money.

In addition to this, I'm also a terrible saver. I CANNOT SAVE to buy something pricey, even if it's something i'm dreaming about and needs couple of months' saving !!!! I have used some methods like putting my money into a bank account (then i discovered that it's actually easier to shop with a card :DDD), and to put some big bills into a pig saving box (i take them out easily buy the end of the month, because there are always some circumstances :D e.g the need to buy a present for a friend, or not willing to borrow from dad)

Now I'm a shoe-a-holic and cute-stuff-holic. My favorite colors of the season are shades of pink, black and flesh-tones of coral, pink, peach etc... I wear a lot of B&W clothes since I'm quite formal dressed at work. The bright colored accessories "rescue" me there.

Now, when more and more clothes of mine have a name and even can be found online (I have made this as a qualifier for clothes :D) I'm being distinguished with my style from others as much as the limited number of affordable boutiques available in Yerevan let me do so.


Now, our wardrobe (I am sharing the room and wardrobe with my sister) is overloaded and on opening any door, something always is falling out on our heads. We are now negotiating with parents to put the purchasing of a new wardrobe for our room on the first place in the list of our planned big purchases.

Friends say that i have a natural luck of finding stuff that is on a big sale and usually the size that is left is my exact one! And they often ask me how do i manage to do it.

Since my silly post has to have a practical value and contain something useful for my readers, I'm offering some tips on shopping and saving for Yerevan girls. To be continued in another post, soon :)

P.S. The movie gave me an idea to establish an anonymous shopaholics' society :D Who's with me? (oops, did I say anonymous?)

BarCamp Yerevan

I want to hug my parents everytime I see these photos :)

I had this idea for a long time now. I want to scan all the photo albums we have and make digital also the family videos we have in VHS cassettes (we don't have a VHS video player for some years now heh).

I started from the red album called "Наш Малыш" ("Our Baby" in Russian). My mother made it after my birth :) with all the photos, descriptions and interesting facts about the first months of my life. I was reading in tears :)

"October 3, 07:15 she was born"

 

This is probably the first photo of mine ever.

There were photos taken by my dad's camera.. BW photos with a lot of dust and scratches (i love them!)..
 Photos taken in photo atelier's, they were already in color :)

it's not me but my sister on one of the photos, guess which one? :)

 

Classic atelier photos (colors are auto-corrected)

...I saw the photo of me walking for the first time of my life.

 

my first steps

 

i liked to fly since i was a baby :)

I found notes by my granny describing the phrases and poems I have learned at the age of a little more than 12 months.In the album she has described each of the first 24 months of my life. When i started to smile, sleep normally, walk, speak, etc... I got to know that at first, my eyes were dark gray.

 

Never thought that I'd learn so many details of that days ! :D I love my mom for doing that !!!
So that's where my love for writing and immortalizing important moments comes from :D She was younger than I am now when she had me :)
I found out that i've been indeed a cute baby :-)))

Enjoy some of my favorite photos :)

  

  

  

here you see where i inherited my current nose from (well almost :D)

 

I love this one.. i wonder where is it.

 

  

in a costume :)))

 

at the republic square

 

on a beach.. no idea where.. probably Sevan?

 

on a swing. see how young my parents are :)

 

thoughtful...

By the way, my sister (born 3 years after me) doesn't have this kind of a book and this much baby photos... partly because they had enough fun with me (maybe :D), partly because of the economic crisis/war situation of that years.

About girls sitting alone at a cafe - cri de coeur

an open letter

My dear Yerevan men. I'm writing this open letter to you with a request.

I'm a girl that often needs some time for herself to analyze the information, write down plans, organize actions, to-do lists and just thoughts. To me, the most convenient places for that are small cafes where i take a coffee and park benches, where i can be alone with myself and reflect a bit.

My request is - when you see a girl sitting by herself, writing, reading a book or just thinking, please please don't approach her asking if everything's okay or if they want to get acquainted. That's silly and meaningless! And afterall it distructs!


Thank you for understanding. 

P.S. Good luck with picking up the girls who actually want to be picked up:)


There are limited number of cafes where i feel myself comfortable sitting alone and writing my personal stuff. That's Yum-Yum, SQ1 and Segafredo. In all other places even the waiters are gazing with a strange look as if i'm there to pick up somebody or to show off something.

I do really need that time away from home/workplace computers where I'm endlessly procrastinating and a half-hour reflection with writing down thoughts, actions and to-dos increases my productivity for several times.

Do you think it's reasonable what I'm asking or am i being naive or, on the contrary, trying to show off something with this? Is it SOO weird that someone feels okay sitting alone?

Ok, true. I don't really think that my audience consists of those people who actually pick up girls such way, so this letter should be considered as a "cri de coeur" (cry from a heart).

By the way, i always enjoy watching self-sufficient women sitting alone and enjoying their coffee and if I am looking at them, that's with admiration.

I used to collect photos where girls are sitting alone at a cafe with a coffee or tea :)

 

  

 

Garou in Yerevan. concert review

I got invited to Garou's concert on March 22. It was organized in the framework of the "Journées de la francophonie" by some "Black Ban Productions" company i've never heard of before. It was supported by the Government of RA, some ministries and the French Embassy in Armenia.
The tickets were quite expensive (10 000 - 70 000 AMD) and i wasn't even planning to go there until i got invited :) My mom, a big Garou fan, was asking me to find cheap tickets for a long time already, but i couldn't do anything. At last, she bought tickets on the last day with a sale !!! 30 000 AMD tickets costed 10 000. I can imagine thoughts and feelings of people who bought earlier with unreasonable prices while discovering the last day "discounts".

So some people payed about 100$ for this piece of paper, and yet this was not the most expensive one.

The concert took place in the big hall of the Sport & Concert complex (where the ice skating-rink is). Many people like my mom were quite disappointed to discover that it will be in the big hall instead of the small one, since the sound could be not satisfactory and it could be cold in that big hall. Despite of the ticket prices, we noticed some hard traffic on the way to the SCC and the huge crowd downstairs and the difficulty of parking in the parking slots of complex. The places in front of the stage were the cheapest since there were no seats and were mostly for youth, for jumping and dancing :) Garou invited the public downstairs "to rock" several times, but i bet people who paid tens of thousands for their seats weren't be so eager to join the crowd in front of the stage :)

I wasn't very much familiar with Garou's music. I didn't listen to anything besides Belle, Gitan and the French album "Seul". I was pleasantly surprised to discover his English songs and the album "Piece of My Soul". I was mostly impressed by the performance of the song "You and I" on a piano. At first i thought that it's again a cover for some famous song that i should likely know. I liked it so much that listened the entire song with closed eyes. Then I typed some of the heard lyrics on my phone notes to find it later :) Now i found that song and can't get enough of it !!!
On last.fm Garou has got only 447.854 plays (it's really not much comparing to other similar artists). He's way too much underrated! I'll slightly increase that number on the following weeks though ;).

Since the audience wasn't very familiar with most of his songs, he made a clever decision to sing covers of other famous French songs. He was actually asking the audience about the french songs we know. He performed "La Mer" (Charles Trenet) and "Beyond the Sea" (Bobby Darin) mixed, also "La Boheme" of Charles Aznavour (piano solo), Celine Dion's "Sous le vent" and some others.

The public was much surprised hearing the beat and chords of "Come together" (of The Beatles) that was smoothly transitioned to "Belle".
Since the "Notre Dame de Paris" fever in Armenia, Garou became famous here and had been claimed to have some Armenian roots. As it usually happens, rumors have it that many of worldwide celebrities' have relations sounding like "grandmother's cousin's son's wife's neighboor was Armenian". He neither confirmed nor denied the fact of him having an Armenian ancestry (also during the press conferences), but pronounced from the stage  "Armenians, we are cousins".

He asked for an Armenian brandy/cognac right on the stage and was given it on the next break :) He kept giving compliments on how kind and hospitable our nation is and saying "genatsed Hayasdan" :)))

This was an amazing show with a truly high-quality sound and organization (not counting the ticket prices). The tickets had several types of protection from fakes, and they were being checked on the entrance by their numbers and attendees had to pass a scanner and have purses and bags checked. And Garou.. well he got some hundreds and why not thousands of new fans. He was worth to be seen on the stage.

* photos are taken by my friend Tata

March 21. to remember

What a day!!!

March 21 - It was a memorable day. I did something that will remind me of this day all of my entire life. I made an artificial scar - a tattoo in the form of a shooting star :) Don't ask me why permanent, why on that particular place, why star... i just don't know it. I've been guided by some unknown force. Today, i've been looking  it and feeling that it was something that had to be there sooner or later. Something was giving me a hint, guiding through all those diverse reactions and inner pros and cons discussions. I had that exact image in my mind !!!!!! it should be right there and right that picture!

Spring officially starts today in all calendars. It was a sunny, warm and nice-in-all-means day. I managed to meet all of my closest friends, my most recent bziks (random, on the street!) and saw a potential bzik in one guy i knew for already years now.

Besides, i started the day out of home. Having lots of fun at Yves Larock's party!

thank you, spring.

March 8 and spring. partying in Yerevan.

Last year these days I was in Rotterdam. March 8 is the International Women's Day and is widely celebrated in Armenia but not in Netherlands. It's not even yet spring there. In Armenia March 8 is the holiday that celebrates also the coming of spring. Lots of flowers, people and action :) City is like waking up after the winter and the streets are crowded, people are happy, all dressed up, happy couples having a walk and all the cafes and restaurants are fully booked up.

Flowers at a Rotterdam market

Last year it was Saturday and as usual I was alone. It was a good occasion to dress up :) I like to dress up. I had taken some stylish stuff there hoping that I'll have the occasion to wear it. After 6 weeks of staying there i didn't have any and despite the fact i was going to celebrate that spring holiday all alone, i decided to get dressed properly as if i was home :) Luckily it was sunny (which was not usual then) and i went out to walk in the city. I walked to the large shopping district at the heart of the city and was happily spending my time :)
Since the beginning of my walk i was noticing people looking at me with unusual interest (unusual for Dutch but not Armenians :) I was thinking that they were maybe trying to recognize a celebrity in me since they usually don't dress up like that and walk :) I spent the day fine... though it wasn't the way i would like to celebrate spring :)

This year i did it my way ;)
Together with my 3 friends, we got dressed up and went partying At first we went to the newly opened glamorous cafe Segafredo Zanetti. I love the interior there and the coffee is great! The service is excellent too and at our arrival all of us got free coffee cocktails with mint . They were non-alcoholic and amazingly tasty !
But we had some dancing plans for the night and we took cosmopolitan cocktails (as our beloved heroes usually do in one very famous TV-series/film ;) and desserts.

 

Panna cotta and cosmopolitan

It was still 9 and we went out to walk in the streets of downtown... We decided to check the music and ambience in Kami and Cheers clubs.. but it was too early for partying and we didn't stay anywhere and went to our usual place- Square One for a beer

The good mood was guaranteed and after the SQ1 we went directly to Kami club. The party has already started and it was cool! I haven't been to clubs this year yet and the 'opening' was quite promising ))))))) I met lots of my friends there and had a lot of fun! In fact I got home 3AM and my feet needed contrast showers and couple of days to rest and recover after 4-5 hours of dancing in fancy but not very comfortable high heels.



And by the way, you may send me hundreds of links to Wikipedia and other pages, but i won't change my belief ! The spring starts March 1 and not 21 !!!!!!! (at least for me)